The Cursed King by Abigail Owen

Chapter Thirty

Silence overtook the mountain and skies as though every creature on earth had come to a ragged halt. Airk wasn’t sure if the silence was because shock had shut down his hearing or because all the fighting had stopped. He didn’t care, either.

She’s alive.

Gods, what did that mean? Was this a specter of her? Like Jedd or his father? An angel sent to finish this fight, then leave him again.

If anything, his dragon’s rage escalated, turning molten in his veins, because his mate was here now. His mate, who needed Pytheios dead. But Airk wanted to go to her.

Desperation and rage tore him apart as he and his dragon battled in his mind as they always did, always at odds with each other, jerking back and forth in the air.

Angelika made the decision for them.

Her sweet, beautiful face contorted into something that reflected the heat of wrath consuming him from the inside out and sent terror lancing through both parts of him. Because his Angelika would never show an emotion like that.

“Angelika?” Meira, standing close by, called to her sister, reaching out a hand. Worry, not relief, wavered in her voice. No doubt the empath could feel as well as see what was going on with her sister.

Skylar apparently didn’t need empathic abilities, because she pulled Meira back slowly, shielding her pregnant sister behind her, putting her body between them.

This terrifyingly beautiful creature wasn’t Angelika. Not entirely.

Her body continued to glow brighter and brighter. Then, in a flash of light more brilliant than any sun flare, white flaming wings rose from behind her. Her lips curled in fury as she lifted her hands and light shot out of her. Electric strands like lightning, but ones that didn’t flash then disappear. The strands connected her to every dragon, every creature around them, like a web of sizzling light, and she was the spider in the middle.

The light hit him so hard, Airk grunted with the impact. With that, a sensation of electricity ran over his nerve endings, as though he’d grabbed hold of a lightning bolt and couldn’t pull away. His dragon roared as they both realized they were paralyzed. Held suspended in the air, not able to even move the muscles of their eyes. Angelika hadn’t even left her sisters out of this web of paralysis.

Staring at his mate in horror, he could sense the moment she decided to do something so against her true nature the expression in her eyes shattered his heart all over again.

“This is what I died for?” she asked in a voice so soft, terror ripped through him along those electric lines. The terror of every person caught in her net.

“I died to save creatures who treat female-born as political objects or built-in nannies. Who have killed precious, vulnerable mates by manipulating the mating system to falsely give them to dragons not destined to be theirs. Who allowed this lying king, who murdered your kings and queens and two phoenixes, to reign for centuries.” Her face contorted more. Twisting into something impossibly brutal. “Centuries!”

Her head whipped round to stare at a dragon in midair. White. Mös? Difficult to tell out of the corner of his eyes, which couldn’t move.

“Either you were blind, oblivious, or in on covering things up,” Angelika declared. “Either way, you are unfit to lead.”

Mös’s scream hit the air, his body contorting with whatever she was doing to him down that electric line.

“Or…” Angelika suddenly mused, sounding bored. Like a cat playing with a mouse when she’d already eaten her fill. “Perhaps you are unfit to live.”

“Angelika, stop!”Airk shot the thought at his mate. This wasn’t who she was.

Only the creature who had risen from the ashes wasn’t his mate. His sweet, funny, merciful mate who everyone loved the moment they met her because they could feel that she was on their side…that she made everyone in her orbit important to her. What looked back at him from those glowing, white eyes was something wild, uncontained, and uncontrolled. All passion, all rage, all sensation, all revenge, and nothing of her softness.

A creature to match to his own dragon.

Mös’s screams cut off, but Airk had no idea if the white dragon was dead or she’d merely stopped hurting him.

Then Angelika turned her head to look directly at Airk, brows lowering as though she were confused.

“Can you hear me?”he thought at her.

A slight narrowing of her eyes he took as a yes.

“Who are you?”Her lips didn’t move, but the thought was clear inside his head.

“I am your mate.”

Pain skated over his nerves, as though someone dragged razors over the soft flesh under his scales, and he ground out a groan even as he tried to keep it in. But the sensation ended quickly. A warning.

“Liar.”

She didn’t recognize him? Airk’s dragon howled inside. Maybe they hadn’t mated.

“I do not lie. Not to you. Not ever.”

She cocked her head, focusing on him in a way that he knew…he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her next move would involve death.

“If you were my mate”—he could hardly hear her over the roaring and thrashing of his dragon—“you would have died with me.”

Airk swallowed, wanting to close his eyes, overwhelmed by anguish that he couldn’t have done that, couldn’t have been with her in the afterlife, even so briefly, to help her. What happened to her in those moments to make her into this? Had she been afraid? In pain? “The bond had not solidified.”

No change in the creature watching him.

“I am Airk Azdajah, and you asked me to be your mate.”He willed her to remember. Willed it with everything inside of him. “I said no. The worst decision of my life.”

“Why would you deny your mate?”

“Because I did not deserve you and I did not want to hurt you.” Was that a flicker of hesitation in her eyes? So difficult to tell around the glow. “I gave you my fire.”

Angelika actually laughed at that, though the sound wasn’t a happy one. “A phoenix gives a dragon her fire. Not the other way around.”

“You only showed dragon sign. Gods, Angelika, remember. Remember me. Remember us.”

Suddenly, that electric line tugged at him, drew him out of the air while every other creature in her thrall—all of the dragons who’d been fighting, the Enforcers, the other kings, even Pytheios—remained imprisoned and unmoving. Even her sisters, who she loved so dearly, were caught and held, forced to watch.

She pulled him down to her. At the same time, his body shifted—not of his will, but of hers, the air around him wavering, perspective changing until he was once again human and standing, held immobile by the crackling lines wrapped around his body.

Angelika’s gaze skated over his features, but no recognition lit her eyes. More like she was assessing his worthiness.

“You and your dragon fight each other,”she said. “He’s…untamed.”

Not feral. Odd choice of word.

But now that he wasn’t in dragon form and his lips couldn’t move, he couldn’t communicate with her. Airk stared at her, reaching for her with his soul. Pleading with her, the real her, to come back to him. Because the phoenix in front of him was a threat. If he had to kill her…

Turn me.

That would be her proof. They were mates. He believed that in every cell of his body. Every part of his soul.

“Turn me.” He tried to make his lips work, his vocal cords. But nothing moved. Nothing except his dragon, who stilled inside him, listening to Airk in a way he usually never did.

Angelika tipped her head, studying him.

“Turn me,” he tried again, thinking the image at her at the same time.

His dragon rumbled in his mind, the sound one the animal side of him had never made. Never. A gentle sound. Coaxing.

Angelika’s eyes widened infinitesimally.

“Turn me,” Airk repeated, his dragon adding that sound again. Both of them begging her.

“You would risk that?” she asked.

Suddenly, he was released from the bonds, the electric lines dropping away from him. Airk pitched forward, hands on his knees, and inhaled, reaching for his dragon, both sides of him no longer at odds. “Yes. I am your mate,” he said, lifting his head and straightening, gazing steadily back at her.

“I am your mate,” he repeated when she frowned. “Look at me. See me. I am your mate, and you are my heart—my soul. I cannot live without you, Angelika.”

His dragon rumbled that soft sound again, and Airk understood him. Understood the love in that sound.

Angelika blinked, her eyes losing the brilliant light, turning frosty blue, and suddenly she looked lost, like a little girl abandoned. But only for a flash. Then the rage was back, eyes turning even more brilliant white, painful to look directly at. “Very well.”

She stepped forward, closing the distance between them, but didn’t touch him. Giving him the final choice in this matter but visibly not believing this would work, her expression almost taunting.

They’d done this while joined physically already. Several times to be certain. He hoped like hells that counted toward this newest attempt. What had her sisters said? That mating worked when both believed. Both chose.

Airk shook his head. “You must choose me, Angelika. You know that.”

She tipped her head again, the flaming wings behind her stretching farther out as though she was preparing to take off into the skies. “According to you, I already did,” she said. “Either that is true or it isn’t.”

She was right.

Without hesitation, his dragon with him in every way, Airk made his choice. Stepping forward, he took her face gently in his hands and lowered his lips to hover over hers. “I love you with everything I have inside of me. Put your fire in me, Angelika Azdajah.”

Her eyes flickered again, but he didn’t wait, pressing his lips to hers in a kiss that he poured his emotions for this woman into. Holding nothing back. Willing her to feel the connection, the love, the perfection that she was to him. The balm to his soul. His match. His mate. As he was hers. Her partner. Her support. He hoped her everything, like she was for him.

Destined by the fates but chosen by their souls.

No sound, no movement warned him. Her lips were still beneath his one moment, then pressing back, answering him kiss for kiss. And then, heat.

Heat pouring down his throat, but also washing over him as her flames consumed him both from the inside and the outside.

But Airk didn’t stop kissing her. Didn’t pause to wait for death to claim him. He trusted it wouldn’t. Believed in them so fully, his faith eclipsed everything. Eclipsed fear, worry, doubt, hesitation.

His dragon rumbled, but the sound wasn’t afraid. It was…content.

Then fire stoked in his own belly. Not consuming, not out of control. His dragon adding their own flames to the inferno rising inside.

Airk sank into the kiss, choosing this woman all over again. Only this time with all of his heart. Nothing held back. Not even his dragon.

A small gasp escaped his mate.

He opened his eyes to find her staring back. Pure white fire swirled all around them, cocooning them, sheltering them from every watching eye. The fire didn’t burn to kill—it burned to transform. To bond. To meld them together until they were one. At the same time, a line of flame started at the top of her eyes and burned down, revealing the change, returning her to him.

Her. His Angelika.

“Airk,” she breathed.

He smiled, relief rushing through him in a wave of emotions so immense there were no words. No way to comprehend the enormity.

She searched his gaze as though trying to find answers there. Did she know what had happened to her? Was she aware?

“You’re mine,” she whispered.

“I always was,” he said. “My love for you extends beyond time, beyond death, and beyond despair.”

With a sob, she threw her arms around his neck, kissing him with every ounce of the joy and laughter and love that had always been at the core of who she was.

Something snapped in place inside Airk’s body, like everything settling inside, followed by an instant burning sensation at the back of his neck—the mating bond solidifying as the mark of his house, or maybe her house, or both, magically recognized the bond now solid between them and seared into the skin for all to see. At the same time, the brokenness of his body washed away. Instantly gone, pain melting away, as though their mating had healed everything about him. A man made new.

Suddenly, he could feel Angelika—her exultation, her hope…her power. Gods, she was pure power. A miracle.

Thephoenix.

The realization came hard on the heels of another. He could also feel his dragon. Not as though they were two separate beings warring within the same body. But now a part of him as much as he was part of it. One and the same.

Everythinghealed. Put back the way it always should have been. And yet, the most important thing in all of that was…her.

Airk pulled back. “Gods, I did not think I could love this much.”

Angelika’s answering smile imprinted on him, a memory he would take out and turn over every single day of his long life. Perfect, incandescent happiness. “I did,” she teased, smile widening to a grin.

Airk chuckled and kissed the end of her nose. “Time to kill the one who should never have been king.”

Angelika’s smile didn’t dim. Instead, it morphed into determination and resignation. No fear, though. And no doubt.

“You have to be the one to do it,” she said.

She was right. Especially after that display of raw, untamed power within her, dragon shifters would never trust her again if she was the one to kill the king. Besides, a throne was either passed down or won through combat.

Airk nodded.

With a sigh, she released them from the fire, the flames melting away like fog blown clear by a soft breeze.